


lucky i'm in love with my best friend

by virotutis



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Mentions of Violence, based off an rp laughs, dumb....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virotutis/pseuds/virotutis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His heart drops to his stomach, and he clenches his teeth before opening his eyes and moving on to the next video, trying to distract himself from thinking about the horrified look on Konoha as he fell, or the vase of flowers left on Ayano’s desk. What a shitty, shitty nightmare he had, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lucky i'm in love with my best friend

Shintaro likes to believe that he’s grown past being woken up in the middle of the night because of a nightmare since, seriously, he’s eighteen years old and he’s an adult now, but every once in a while, he gets one or two that gets him to kick and flail in his sleep, rolling around on his bed and ending up rolling off and hitting the ground and bringing him back into consciousness.

They’re usually stupid ones though, ones that have giant soda cans rampaging through the city and destroying everything or ones where Ene releases all of his private files onto the internet for real or ones where Konoha tries to kiss him, grabbing him by the shoulders and touching his face, muttering a soft, “Shintaro,” before leaning in.

(Those aren’t actually nightmares, but Shintaro would like to pretend that they are, because ha, no, he is totally not having romantic dreams about his best friend, his stupidly hot best friend that smiles a little too softly when he looks at him, that holds his hand gently sometimes when he just wakes up, that never judges him no matter what. No, he is totally not having dreams about him.)

Maybe once in a while, around his father’s death anniversary, he gets a dream about him, about the day that he got the news that his father drowned in the ocean, or about his dream version of his father yelling at him disappointedly because of what he’s done to himself, but those dreams aren’t like this one, aren’t like any of the others.

His dreams, be them nightmares of a coke can version of Godzilla or a dream about winning a life time supply of soda, are usually fuzzy and easy to forget after a couple of hours unless he writes them down somewhere, making note of their absurdity.

This one is different, sharp and clear, cutting into his mind like a serrated knife, and leaving him with disorientated with vivid images stuck in his head on repeat, burning into his eyelids whenever he dares to close his eyes and a throbbing pain in his head.

He doesn’t go back to sleep after he wakes up- can’t go back to sleep, because he swears that he can still smell actual blood, musty and metallic and cloying- so he ends up on the computer instead, sitting in the dark and staring at his computer screen and trying to forget about that horrible nightmare and trying his best to ignore the headache.

Of course, that doesn’t exactly work either, because the moment that he’s started to finally calm down a little and is able to breathe again smelling a hint of copper, he ends up seeing one of the posts that “Konoha” made last night, and it gets him to remember the crazed look on Konoha’s face when he was holding the gun to his head in Shintaro’s shitty dream, threatening to shoot.

He silently closes the tab and rubs at his temples, trying to soothe the throbbing that gets even worse the instance that he thinks about the stupid scenes from his dream. It doesn’t work, and he considers getting up to get some painkillers or something.

It’s probably not worth the trip though, because he’ll probably end up waking his mother or Momo in his fumble to get downstairs in the dark and they’ll yell at him, not believing that he actually really does have a headache and instead assume that he just wants to get a can of coke at three in the morning.

It’s almost depressing how little faith they have in him, and he kind of wants to cry. He groans, shifting around in his computer chair to try and lean back in it comfortably at the least, but he just ends up freezing when it lets out a loud creaking noise.

He slowly sits back up, flinching when the chair continues to creak, albeit softly, when he moves. Great, terrific, he can’t lie back in his comfortable computer chair and has to actually sit up instead. He doesn’t trust himself in his bed, because he’ll probably end up falling asleep and having that dream again. He would really like to never see that dream ever again.

He groans again, slapping himself in the face slightly, trying to rouse himself, but it doesn’t work as well as he hoped. It looks like he’s going to have to do this the hard way then, he thinks, gulping slightly before plugging his headphones into his speakers.

Laughter is a good wake to wake yourself up, so he takes a deep breath before turning on a vine. He spends the next ten minutes or so watching videos, biting down on his lip to stop himself from laughing out loud, before he ends up watching a vine of someone falling out of a tree.

Normally, he probably wouldn’t think twice about it, would probably laugh at it really, but, he pauses when he sees it. Falling… It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, his head throbbing slightly, and he closes his eyes.

He doesn’t understand why it makes him so uncomfortable, and he taps his fingers on his keyboards for a few moments while he thinks about it. He probably shouldn’t have, in all honesty, because trying to dig in his mind just brings up images of Ayano, smiling at him while falling from the sky, of him falling off a cliff and staring up at the blue, blue sky.

His heart drops to his stomach, and he clenches his teeth before opening his eyes and moving on to the next video, trying to distract himself from thinking about the horrified look on Konoha as he fell, or the vase of flowers left on Ayano’s desk. What a shitty, shitty nightmare he had, really.

He keeps watching until it’s six, a somewhat decent time for him to be up and around, and he types up a quick post on his blog to vent about his frustration and confusion, before heading downstairs and going to make breakfast to keep himself busy.

He doesn’t normally cook, preferring to leave it to his mom, but it’s not like today is a typical day, with the nightmare and all. He prepares the rice to be cooked and steamed, and he’s just finished making miso soup and tamagoyaki when his mom finally comes downstairs to start cooking.

She blinks at him, looking a bit confused, and he just shrugs. “Good morning,” he says, in the middle of preparing fish to be broiled. “I made breakfast.”

“Yes, I see,” his mom says, squinting at him suspiciously, frowning when she notices the slight bags underneath his eyes and she crosses her arms over her chest. “Did you sleep at all last night? How long have you been up?”

“I got some sleep,” he answers vaguely, shrugging again and turning back to finish wrapping the fish with aluminum foil. “I’ve been up long enough.”

“Shintaro,” she huffs, voice slightly disappointed. “I thought we talked about this. You need to start sleeping more. It’s not healthy. I’m not saying this to be mean. I care about you.”

“I know,” he replies, holding back a loud groan. “I know, Mom. I’m trying, okay? I just… didn’t have a good dream last night. I didn’t want to go back to sleep afterwards. I don’t want to talk about it.”

She frowns even more, looking concerned. “Well, okay, if you’re sure about not wanting to share… You can always talk to me or your sister, you know,” she says, slightly hesitantly, like she’s afraid he’s going to snap at her, and he just clenches his teeth and nods. He really fucked up, back in the day, if his own mother is afraid to talk to him. “We love you.”

“I know, I love you guys too,” he says softly, swallowing a lump in his throat, and the instant that he finishes wrapping up the fish, he steps away from the counter to walk over to his mom to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, which she returns excitedly, wrapping her arms so tight around him that he can’t breathe and pressing kisses all over his face.

“Shintaro…!” she laughs, and she lifts him up slightly, making him let out a small squeak. “I think this is the first time you’ve said that you’ve loved me since you were nine! My darling son…!”

He can’t help the small whine that escapes him. “Mom,” he says, drawing out the ‘o’ and flailing, “please! Let me down! I’m eighteen years old! I’m a fully grown adult now! Put me down now!”

It just makes his mom laugh even more, but she does gently place him back on the ground. “Eighteen or not, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re my son, mister! You’re still my little Shintaro that needed to hold my hand when we left the house or else you’d start to cry because you were afraid of getting lost and that couldn’t sleep by himself until he was nine!”

“Mom, please!” he groans loudly, cheeks starting to flush. “Don’t! That was all when I was younger, okay! Never bring it up again, please! I beg of you!”

“Fine, fine, on one condition though,” she says, grinning at him and turning him towards the exit. “Go back upstairs and get some more sleep, okay? I’ll finish cooking for you and I’ll save you something to eat, so just go back up stairs. Please, Shintaro.”

He’s hesitant to leave, because sleep isn’t a good place for him to be, not with these images still floating around in his mind, but the way his mother’s voice is filled with worry and concern makes him sigh softly. “Okay,” he says, turning around to give her a quick peck on the cheek. “Okay. I’ll go back to sleep then. Remember our deal, okay?”

“Yes, yes,” she says, rolling her eyes and giving him a push. “You got it, mister. No more embarrassing stories about your past. Fine, I still have stories about your sister anyway.”

He grins at that, giving her a thumb up before starting to make his way back upstairs and into his room. He crawls into his bed, and stares up at the ceiling, determined to just stay awake for a couple of hours. He doesn’t last very long though, because his bed and blankets are warm and soft and inviting, and blinking away the sleep doesn’t work all too great, and he ends up drifting off.

It’s a bad idea, and he probably should have left his mother keep talking about baby stories, because the moment he goes back to sleep, the nightmare continues. It’s a tad different this time, but it’s still essentially the same thing in the end. He ends up alone.

This time, instead of watching Konoha try and shoot himself, he dreams of Ayano jumping off of the roof, of Haruka and Takane suddenly disappearing and leaving him alone in a classroom with only two desks, of a window popping up and asking him if he’s sure that he wants to uninstall a certain program, and of a pair of shiny red scissors kept in one of his drawers hidden underneath his clothes.

He wakes up screaming and clutching his throat, trying to pull the pair of scissors out because he didn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die, before suddenly remembering that it was just a dream, and he takes a deep breath.

He doesn’t think that he’ll be able to sleep for the next few weeks, if this keeps happening. Because he’s barely been asleep for, he looks over at the clock to check the time, maybe three hours all together, he’s already gone through all this shit.

He doesn’t even think that nightmares and dreams are supposed to work this way, and that they aren’t supposed to give him a throbbing pain in his head that won’t go away or supposed to stay with him so strongly.

Terrible, he repeats, shaking his head. This is so, so terrible. It’s only eight in the morning and he’s already exhausted as all hell, and he can’t even sleep either. He can’t even go downstairs to get a cold can of coke either, because his mom will probably just make him go back to bed.

He groans loudly and throws his feet over to the side of his bed, standing up as quietly as he can, before getting down to his knees and reaching underneath his bed. It takes a few seconds of blind fumbling before he feels cardboard, and he grabs onto it and slowly starts to drag it out.

He doesn’t like having to resort to his emergency soda supply, but if now isn’t considered an emergency then he doesn’t know what else is. So he pulls out a can and cracks it open, feeling a sense of satisfaction when he hears the snapping of metal and the sound of fizzing, before taking a big gulp.

It burns perfectly going down, and he’s already starting to feel more awake. Perfect. He chugs the whole can down before reaching for another one, hesitating for a moment before thinking, screw it, and he pops that one open too.

He’s too busy fueling up to notice that Ene has come back onto his computer, floating around his desktop and watching him with a frown on her face, and he almost drops his can in shock when she suddenly sighs loudly, shaking her head.

“Drinking soda this early in the morning? That’s so unhealthy, Master! Have you even eaten or showered yet? Judging by the bedhead you have, probably not! What kind of soda maniac are you!”

The usual cheerful look on her face contrasts with the worried look that she had in his dream and it gets Shintaro to feel a little more reassured that it was just a dream after all. He clears his throat, frowning, before saying, “H-hey, not too loud, Ene… I’m supposed to be asleep,” internally panicking and getting up to walk over to his computer to unplug his speakers or something. “Seriously, you have to be quiet.”

She gives him a cheeky grin and is probably about to play one of her sirens to go against him, but she suddenly pauses and squints at him. “Have you even slept at all, Master?” she asks. “You look even worse than usual! I had no idea someone could look this bad!”

“Way to kill my self-confidence,” he mutters, shaking his head slightly before clearing his throat to give her an answer. “All I got was three hours or so of sleep. Some… stuff happened. I don’t really feel like going back to sleep right now.”

Ene snickers loudly, doing a somersault on the screen. “Aw, did Master have a nightmare?” And his silence makes her pause, feet hanging right over her head, and her face softens. “Did you?” she asks, voice uncharacteristically gentle for once.

He looks away and grunts. That look is too similar to the one from his dream for him to be comfortable, and his stomach starts to churn. “Yeah,” he huffs eventually, looking down at his pants and picking a speck of lint off before turning back to squint at her. “I did. What’s it to you?”

She frowns at him again, righting herself to look at him properly. “Nothing, nothing,” she says, shrugging and pouting slightly. Her face returns back to normal, and Shintaro is back to feeling relieved. “Don’t be so defensive, Master. If you’re going to be in this bad of a mood, then I’ll go play somewhere else then!”

“Go ahead,” he huffs, turning around to walk over to his bed again to get more soda. He doesn’t think he can look her in the face, not right now, when the scared look she gave him when he yelled at here is still in his mind. “Go and don’t come back.”

She blows a loud raspberry at him before she leaves him, yelling, “Dumb Master!” before heading off somewhere else. He appreciates the silence for all of two minutes, before it starts to unnerve him slightly. Normally he enjoys solitude, but after those dreams, it feels a bit empty and eerily similar to the dream with the scissors.

He makes his way over to his computer again, sitting down in his chair and checks his messages to distract himself. To his surprise, he has a few of them from some people. One from Ayano, one from Ene- surprisingly, considering how she just came to him- and one from Konoha.

He replies to Ayano’s and Ene’s before getting to Konoha’s, reading the text over and over in his mind, hearing Konoha’s voice actually saying those things, and he can’t help but smile a little, shaking his head. He doesn’t need the pillow, idiot. He really doesn’t.

He types up a reply, telling him that he’s okay and that he doesn’t need to return the pillow and that he doesn’t need to come over, but he pauses, before backspacing and erasing all of it. He’s not feeling too good being by himself, because his mom is probably at work now and Momo’s going to a study session.

He types up something about wanting to see Konoha, and he probably sounds too desperate and disgusting, but he doesn’t care and Konoha doesn’t seem to really notice it anyway. A guy needs some companionship sometimes, okay, and he needs it a lot right now, because it’s too empty in his room without Ene and whenever he closes his eyes he can only see the absolutely horrified look on her face when he clicked yes, uninstalling her from his computer and his life completely.

Konoha agrees to come over, insisting to bring the pillow with him, and they get off-subject, talking about buying more pillows and a set of pajamas for Konoha or something, and, for once today, Shintaro actually feels slightly okay, with something warm bubbling in his chest while he talks to Konoha, light and freeing, compared to the cluster of emotions he had previously. It’s stupid and dumb and totally gay, but he can’t help it. Konoha just makes him feel all warm and bubbly and happy. It’s disgusting.

They get back on topic eventually though, and Shintaro somehow ends up cooking breakfast for Konoha too, cooking him a simple Western style meal because he doesn’t exactly feel like cooking the same thing he did in the morning, and the moment he finishes cooking the bacon and sausages, already done with the eggs, he hears knocking at the door.

He puts down the spatula onto the marble countertop, briefly considering whether or not he should take the apron off (bright pink with a Hello Kitty patch clumsy knitted onto it by Momo in the bottom left corner) before deciding to take it off, tossing it to a corner of the kitchen. He’ll pick it up later or something.

When he opens the door, Konoha’s right in the middle of knocking again, one fist raised and about to strike thin air with the other arm wrapped around the pillow that he took. Shintaro blinks in shock as Konoha’s fist comes closer and closer, just barely stopping right in front of Shintaro’s face.

“Oh,” Konoha says, slowly unclenching his fist to wave, “hello. Good morning, Shintaro. How are you?”

“I,” Shintaro blinks again, taking a step back nervously, afraid that Konoha might actually hit him. “I, um, I guess the morning could have gone better. Hello, Konoha.” He pauses, clearing his throat and opening the door wider so Konoha can step in. “What about you? How was your morning?”

Konoha nods before taking a step into the house, wiping his feet on the doormat. “It was nice,” he replies, squeezing the pillow in his arm. “The weather was good. I saw a cat on the way here and I chased it for a while, but it jumped over a fence and went into someone’s backyard. Kido told me that I can’t chase cats that go into people’s backyards and that it was breaking and entering, so I had to leave it alone. It was a very cute cat. It reminded me of you.”

“That’s nice,” Shintaro says, not exactly paying attention to what Konoha is saying, zoning him out to look him up and down instead. Konoha looks perfectly fine, the way that he normally looks, excluding the pillow he’s holding onto and the lime green toothbrush in his pocket. He doesn’t look any different, so maybe what happened the other night was just a hacker or something after all…

Konoha makes a quizzical noise, titling his head to the side in his confusion. “Shintaro?” he asks, frowning slightly and stepping in front of Shintaro. “Are you okay…? You keep looking at me… A-are you thinking that I’m not Konoha? I am! That weird hacker might have pretended to be me last night, but it’s really me, Shintaro! I promise!”

Shintaro shakes his head and forces a smile before reaching up and patting Konoha on the shoulder. “It’s fine,” he grunts, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it, Konoha. I’m fine. Come on in already, your food’s going to get cold.”

At the mention of food, Konoha perks up, nodding violently before taking a step around Shintaro. “Oh, um, okay… It smells good! You’re good at cooking, Shintaro, like Kido. You should cook more. It would be nice…”

Shintaro shrugs before closing the door. “It’s just simple stuff to make,” he says, closing the door before walking back to the kitchen with Konoha at his side. “It’s just eggs, bacon, and sausage. Even you could make it. Probably…”

Konoha shakes his head. “I’m not allowed to use the oven or the stove,” he admits. “Sensei told me that I can’t because he doesn’t want me to make something and burn myself or finish making something and forgetting to turn the stove or the oven off and ending up starting a fire and burning down the house and making us homeless.”

“That’s oddly detailed,” Shintaro frowns, blinking. “Your sensei person is pretty weird. Huh, that sounds like something that Momo’s teacher would say though. He called us once for a talk about Momo’s grades and he ended up getting distracted and going off-subject. He’s a strange, strange man.”

He’s about to say more, but Konoha looks distracted, looking like he’s almost about to drool, so Shintaro just chuckles and shakes his head before slapping him on the shoulder. “Enough of that stuff though. Go ahead and eat. You said that you didn’t eat last night, right? I’ll just wait upstairs, so just come up to my room when you’re done eating.”

Konoha blinks, nodding a few times before taking a step forward, but he hesitates and turns back around to look at him. “Is, is it really okay for me to eat it all? What about you, Shintaro?”

Shintaro’s a little stupidly touched that food-crazy Konoha would actually double-check to make sure that it was fine to eat everything, and he shoves his hands into his pockets and gives him a small, crooked grin. “Yeah, sure, go for it, man. I’ll eat later. Not really feeling hungry right now.”

Konoha looks at him again, before briefly nodding. “Okay… I’ll save you some then, okay, Shintaro?” he mutters quickly, not even waiting for Shintaro to reply to him before turning around and practically running into the kitchen.

Shintaro sighs fondly, rolling his eyes at Konoha’s rush to eat his food, before heading upstairs and back into his room, plopping down on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. It doesn’t take long for him to start nodding off, because really, three hours of sleep while having nightmares is too much for even him, and he’s stupid enough to just let himself fall back asleep, thinking that maybe third time’s the charm.

It’s not, because nothing in his life ever, ever works out the way that he wants it to, and he dreams again and it’s back to that cliff, back to falling, falling, falling down, the same way that Ayano did when she leapt off the roof, but Konoha- stupid, stupid, loyal, nice, Konoha- reaches out of him, jumping off right after him, looking determined and desperate.

It’s him that runs off the cliff because of a bee, like the stupid, stupid, lame, disgusting, worthless piece of trash that he is, but it’s Konoha that ends up with the tree branch piercing through his stomach, ripping through his flesh and metal interior with a loud, anguished scream contorting his usual, calm face and with his blood splashing onto Shintaro’s face and his clothes and the cliff wall.

It’s Konoha that slowly bleeds out on the dirty, rocky ground, the light slowly fading out of his red eyes, panting with blood dripping out of his mouth and trying to speak, trying to get Shintaro to calm down and stop crying and screaming and apologizing and trying to press down on the wound to stem the bleeding to try and stop his friend, his best friend from dying again, only shushing him and muttering something about them being friends, it’s because they’re friends that Konoha did this for him and

Shintaro wakes up sobbing and shaking and screaming, with Konoha shaking his shoulder, trying to wake him up, looking extremely worried.

“S-Shintaro, what happened…?” he asks, eyebrows furrowing in confusion and frowning. “You were sleeping and you were moving around and I thought it was normal, but then you starting muttering something, so I came over to check if you were okay, but then you started crying and yelling, so I tried to wake you up, but you wouldn’t wake up until now, are you okay?”

Shintaro doesn’t even bother to reply to him, sitting up as fast as he can and pulling Konoha’s shirt up, staring at his stomach. It’s stupidly flat and smooth, and he can’t help but start touching it, dragging his fingertips on the skin and trying to make sure that Konoha doesn’t actually have a hole in his stomach.

Konoha makes a confused noise, but he doesn’t exactly stop Shintaro, so he’d like to believe that Konoha’s given him permission to do this. He keeps feeling around until he’s satisfied, letting out a sigh, and then falling forward and pressing his forehead against Konoha’s stomach.

Konoha lets him stay there for a few minutes, before starting to shift and shuffle, letting out a small squeak. “S-Shintaro…? That’s, that’s, um… I don’t think you should be putting your head there… I’m starting to feel… a little weird….”

Shintaro blinks a couple of times, before pulling his head away and clearing his throat. “Yeah, uh, sorry about that, Konoha, I… I didn’t mean to do that.” He laughs nervously, and clears his throat again before reaching up and wiping his tears away.

“It is okay, Shintaro, I don’t…mind,” Konoha says, reaching over and patting Shintaro on the shoulder. “Are you… are you feeling better now? I hope that you are… Do you want to cuddle? Seto told me that whenever people are sad or scared they would like to be hugged. Can I hug you?”

Konoha doesn’t wait for him to answer before crawling into bed with him, wrapping his stupidly long limbs around Shintaro tight, and Shintaro just sighs, mumbling, “sure, do whatever you want, I guess,” and it doesn’t take long for Konoha to nod and slowly start to pull him down, until he’s on his back.

Shintaro freezes. “Konoha,” he starts, frowning and wiggling to get out of Konoha’s graps, “I, I don’t want to go back to sleep.”

Konoha doesn’t let him go though, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, Shintaro,” he says softly, and when Shintaro turns to face him, Konoha gives him the warmest, brightest smile that he’s ever seen, making Shintaro blush a little and look away. “I’ll be here, okay…? I’ll beat away all your nightmares.”

After that smile, Shintaro just doesn’t have the heart to say no to him. He just groans and scoots closer to him, pressing an ear against Konoha’s chest to hear the soft ticking of his mechanical heart. “You better beat them off, you dumb robot,” he huffs before closing his eyes and letting Konoha’s warmth and his humming lull him back to sleep, a peaceful one this time.


End file.
